Shadow Kiss
by MadameShi
Summary: Part of the 30 Kisses themed fanworks project. A Virtua Fighter anime fic series on Kage-Maru and Sarah Bryant. Sequel to "Shadow Play." Spoilers up to Episode 24  entire Season One .


Excerpts from the song _Moonlight Shadow_ by Mike Oldfield and Maggie Reilly, part of the album _Crises_.  
_Virtua Fighter is copyright of Sega and others._

**SHADOW KISS  
Chapter 1 of 30**

_Look Over Here_

**by Shi**

_The last that she ever saw him  
Carried away by a moonlight shadow  
He passed on worried and warning  
Carried away by a moonlight shadow  
Lost in a riddle last Saturday night  
Far away on the other side_

**Sarah Bryant**  
_Berlin, Germany_

"Sarah?"

_Who is Sarah?_

"Sarah? Can you hear me? Please open your eyes."

"C'mon, Jacky, just let her sleep. She's been through enough as it is without you bothering her to wake up."

"Sarah?" The voice was prodding, insistent.

"Jacky." The other voice was mildly accented, a little miffed. "Why don't we go downstairs and buy some food? I'm hungry and I haven't eaten for the past-"

"Shut up, Akira."

_Shut up._

They were too noisy, these two voices. Who were they?

_Jacky._

_Akira._

These were the names of people, I'm sure. I knew these people. Not only do I know them, but I care for them. I'm even sure that one of them is my brother.

I fought through the cobwebs of sleep and struggled to lift the heaviness that barred me from seeing the owners of the voices. I realized that the weighty barriers were my own eyelids.

Another sound reached my ears, this time a thin, whispery voice, all the more familiar. I realized it was my own voice that I heard. It was so pathetically weak.

"Jacky?"

"Sarah? Thank God! Are you all right? Talk to me, please."

I obeyed. I knew Jacky. My brother wouldn't shut up unless I told him myself that I was okay.

Of course I was okay. I was in New Las Vegas, and Jacky had just qualified for a race. We would be attending a party held in his honor tonight. I had even managed to cajole Pai to go shopping with me for her formal dress, although it took the better part of three hours.

No, that didn't sound right. We had already attended the party. Pai had worn a pretty red cheongsam that looked fantastic with her black braids. And I had even asked Akira to dance with me.

_Akira didn't know how to dance, but I didn't mind. He was trying so hard that he was too cute for words, and I found myself wishing that I could kiss away his confusion at executing waltz steps._

Then we had attended the race, all four of us. Jacky had been closing in on the lead, the shots too close to call. And there was that crash, the white car swerving as if it was caught in the middle of a tiny yet sudden, forceful hurricane.

_The sounds of metal smashing into concrete, the screech of rubber against asphalt, the screams._

_No._

It couldn't have happened, could it?

Eyes as blue as my own flickered onto my face as my vision slowly began to clear. The ceiling was white. So vividly white. A grayish fan spun around lazily, taking all its time in the world. Its motion somehow mocked and irritated me

I shifted my head away to look back into those eyes. They belonged to someone who knelt by the bed on which I was lying. He had golden hair. He had on a shiny black jacket. The fabric reflected and refracted light and the sight of it made me wince. Garish as always, but it suited him, like his spiky hair did.

_Jacky._

_Jacky is alive._

I had once mended that jacket's inner hem, when he stupidly got it caught in the van's side door.

I shakily reached out for the side of the jacket that still bore the marks of my efforts. Clutched and tugged. I felt his eyes follow my movements, taking in every action that I made, almost hesitantly.

"So my sewing still held until now, huh?" I said as I looked at his face, the one that belonged to the person who was my best friend, my brother.

Crystalline liquid fell from those blue eyes I knew and loved so well. Strong, familiar arms closed around me, and I felt like I had come home.

His voice, the one that been so squeaky only a few years ago, was now deep and comforting and safe in my ear. "Yes, Sarah, I'm afraid it still does."

_Carried away by a moonlight shadow  
I watched your vision forming  
Carried away by a moonlight shadow  
Stars move slowly in the silvery night  
Far away on the other side_

**Kage-Maru**  
_Berlin, Germany_

She was awake.

Seemingly weak and presumably disoriented, but awake.

_Sarah._

I could see her from where I stood. Her brother Jacky and the Japanese boy, Akira Yuki, were both at her bedside. The former was kneeling on the floor, head bent low as he spoke with his sister, concern and relief on his face. Yuki did not seem to know what to do, awkwardly standing by the foot of the bed and staring at the blond siblings.

The three of them had checked into the cheap hotel early yesterday morning. I knew they had traveled from the castle of Eva Durix, which was located deep in the German countryside, by various means of transport that had nearly exhausted the little money they had left. Sarah had been in and out of consciousness since the end of her fight with her brother.

It was a wonder how they all managed to survive until now.

Two nights ago, the Bryant boy, Yuki and the Chinese girl Pai Chan infiltrated Durix's castle by themselves, ready to face off against the joint human and robotic forces of Liu Kowloon's international Koenkan gang and Eva Durix's shadowy research empire.

They had intended to rescue Sarah from Durix's brainwash grip and succeeded in doing so, but not without a price. Liu Kowloon, the Koenkan's second-in-command, managed to capture Pai Chan amidst the chaos. This girl was the only child of the Koenkan leader Lau Chan and it was very likely that Kowloon will attempt to secure a more permanent influence on the entire Koenkan by marrying her. After all, he had Durix's methods of persuasion at his disposal.

Bryant had defeated his own sister in the end, breaking the earrings that transmitted mind-control waves from Durix to his sister's vulnerable psyche. Thus, Sarah was herself again, breaking the walls that were set by countless hellish mind and body conditioning experiments.

Experiments that could never have taken place without my assistance.

Because I was the one who had been hired by Eva Durix to kidnap Sarah Bryant.

And, now, as I look from the bay window of the bigger, more costly hotel across the street at the girl whom I had abducted and delivered straight to the hands of a madwoman, I felt something I could not quite name.

_Regret?_

There were whispers at the back of my mind that could not be so easily ignored as I have done countless times in the past.

_Pain?_

_Remorse?_

Then again, the Shadow Warrior knew nothing about emotions.

_Loss?_

_The need to see Sarah, to speak with her, even with everything that I have done?_

When I left New Las Vegas right after I turned Sarah over to Durix, I had been driven by a purpose that threatened to overwhelm me.

_To get her back._

I had been too cowardly that fateful night when I saved her as she fell off the balcony. It would have been too easy to just spirit her away, hide her from Durix, and return the money that I had been paid for her abduction.

But these I did not do.

Instead, I followed Durix and Sarah across the United States and to Europe. In France, I had succeeded in rescuing Sarah from the Koenkan laboratory facility, but discovered thereafter that the woman who had dressed my wound in New Las Vegas was gone from her body, replaced by a merciless, soulless fighting machine.

It had taken that final confrontation in Durix's Germany castle to finally bring her back to her senses.

And, now, I found myself wishing to return to that night in New Las Vegas.

To decide not to sell the life of this young woman to Eva Durix. To decide in favor of something that I wanted to do, as opposed to what I believed I was duty-bound and honor-bound to as the elusive Shadow Warrior.

Perhaps, then, we all would not be here.

I would not be stealing glimpses from a distant vantage point, blending into the shadows and remaining unseen. I would not be so, nearly madly, driven to set things right.

I would not be wishing that I could simply open the window and shout at her, _look over here!_

_I am here, Sarah._

That could never be.

_I stay, I pray  
I see you in heaven far away  
I stay, I pray  
I see you in heaven one day  
Carried away by a moonlight shadow  
Far away on the other side_


End file.
